THE EXPLOSIVE FORMULA FOR PUTTING SONGS ON THE AIR- By Mark Rheaume/CBC Library/Music Columnist for CBC's Fresh Air

Indie Connectors has provided you with a variety of information regarding radio airplay and tips to get your song heard.​Mark Rheaume from the CBC sheds some light on the reasons why your song may not have been the hit single you thought it would be.

MARK RHEAUMEIn the CBC Music Library, Mark Rheaume auditions thousands of new recordings for potential airplay every year – everything from independently produced albums by struggling artists to the latest releases from international superstars.He appears as a music columnist on the CBC Radio shows “Fresh Air”, “Ontario Morning”, and Fredericton’s “Information Morning”. In a ten-year run from 2004 to 2014, he profiled new albums in a syndicated feature carried on CBC stations across the country. He has served as a juror for the Juno Awards and the Polaris Prize and for many years appeared regularly on CBC’s “Definitely Not the Opera”, providing a historical context for music in popular culture.

Born in Fort Smith, North West Territories, Mark grew up in Ottawa, where he bought his first piece of recorded music when he was eight years old (a 45 of “Proud Mary” by Solomon Burke). He graduated from the Broadcasting program at Algonquin College and joined the CBC in 1998. His first project at the CBC was archiving the thousands of scripts and albums left to the CBC Music Library by the late radio personality Clyde Gilmour of “Gilmour’s Albums” fame. He lives in Toronto with his wife Kelly and cat Coltrane.

You’ve done everything right!

In my experience, three big factors determine if a song will be played – and you only really have control over one of them. These factors are Timing, Numbers, and Taste. Take the first letter in each of these and you have TNT…an explosive force for both good and ill - and one that in musical terms has the potential to yield the spins you want.

The TNT Factors!

Your radio contact has told you that your music is perfect for airplay. You’re represented by one of the top people in the music biz. You’ve sent your recording to the station well in advance of the release date. You’ve done everything right.Yet you still didn’t get any spins.How can this happen? If you’ve followed the playbook to a tee and the music is a good fit, shouldn’t spins naturally follow? Is your lack of airplay due entirely to the fact that no one knows you yet?Partly, but not completely.

Timing

Let’s start with the first of these factors, Timing, which is also the one over which you have at least some control.​I say “some” control because musicians have often hit it big due to outside events. The Beatles after the JFK assassination, for example, or Alanis Morissette as young put-upon women were finding their voice, both benefitted from offering exactly what the world needed at just the right time. There’s no way to plan anything like that. One thing that can help along these lines, however, is a topical song. Obviously the quality of music will also be a big factor here (as we’ll see when I get to Taste), but so, too, is Timing. The sooner you release a time-sensitive song to radio, the better.In a similar fashion, anything tied to a particular time of the year or a pre-planned holiday can’t arrive too late. For example, a Christmas album needs to reach radio well before December 24th (ideally in November), but not in late August when music pickers are still a few months from having any interest in Yuletide music.More generally, it makes sense to send your music to radio during quieter periods, like summer, when there’s less competition. But no matter when your record comes out, you can’t go wrong if the drop date occurs while you’re on tour – or about to go on tour. Many stations wait until an artist is in town before they’ll play their music. Which means that countless fine recordings have gone without airplay because an artist isn’t touring. Someone like Arcade Fire will get spins without touring, but very few new artists have that luxury.

Numbers and Taste

Now to a pair of difficult factors: Numbers and Taste.

Numbers is perhaps the greatest challenge for the musician seeking airplay. Hundreds and hundreds - perhaps even thousands - of music submissions arrive at radio stations every year. Luckily, some stations employ people whose job it is to listen to as many of these recordings as humanly possible and winnow that total down to the most airplay-worthy recordings. If your music has the potential for spins, it stands a great chance of making this cut. That’s the good news. But there’s also a mathematical challenge quite different from the artistic consideration: there will always be far more good songs than there are programming hours in which to play them. Meanwhile, old – or gold - tracks continue to get their spins, driving the overall Numbers even higher. In a way, it’s like someone auditioning up for a TV or movie role and seeing dozens of other actors who are perfect for the role. All can play the part, but only one will be picked. But it doesn’t mean the actor has no talent or won’t be chosen for another part the next time. The same is true for musicians.

Numbers, daunting as they may be, at least give us something we can grasp. The last of our factors, Taste, is a whole other beast and the most elusive and ephemeral of all.

To use the acting comparison again, I can say from experience that music pickers are like casting directors who know an actor is right for the part but, beyond general character “types”, can never tell you ahead of time exactly what they’re after. The same is true for music. Whether the artist is new or established, a music picker can “feel” right away if the song is something that works for them. There are no boxes to check, no lists of criteria to reference. Just a sense that “this” (whatever “this” may be) is exactly what they’re after. Much of the time that feeling is shaped entirely by that person’s Taste. Asking the show producer or music picker to explain what they like about that song will produce words like “energy” or “tone”. But it’s really like asking someone why they love their spouse. It’s something we can sense but can’t quantify. (Sometimes a song that a producer otherwise loves still won’t make the cut because it doesn’t quite fit with the line-up of tunes they’ve already put in place for that show…which is a Timing issue once again, I suppose, and one you can’t control).

The good news when it comes to Taste – and Timing for that matter - is that it’s always possible you’ll score in this area the next time, perhaps with a different music picker. Many times I’ve seen a song rejected by one show producer, only to be chosen by another.

You can’t control Taste, just as you can’t control Numbers and only have a partial say in Timing.

But trust in your music, and if your Timing is right, Numbers and Taste don’t have to blow up on you.